The project will address the following main research questions: -

• How can public and private climate services providers become more effective in meeting the needs and demands of small and large farmers and local authorities in socially just manners?
• What are some new, possibly “good practice” service providers and public-private-civic partnerships (e.g. Reuters Market Light in Maharashtra) and what are their success factors?
• What kind of climate change relevant knowledge and information are local authorities/extension workers most aware of and use actively?
• How do the climate services and related knowledge/ learning networks operate as interpretation and translation arenas?
• How do different types of farmers (male/female, large/small, low/high caste) access weather information and related advisory services and translate knowledge into action?

The project will use a case study approach – allowing for in-depth field work - to compare the governance of climate services (mainly public vs. mainly private-civic) across similar social and ecological sites. The cases will include comparison of 4 different climate services system addressing 4 village communities in the drylands of Maharashtra (with similar ecological and social compositions). The project will study the climate services systems at two levels, recognizing that these systems include multiple levels or layers of agencies; i) the national, state and district levels (macro and meso-level); and, ii) the community level (local-level/user-end). This research approach will allow a comparison of how public and private institutions coordinate activities between and amongst themselves (at macro/meso-levels), and how public and private/civic institutions interact differently in coordination and translation of climate knowledge for different kinds of users and uses (at micro/local level).